While honest websites experienced the ups and downs of Google’s March 2024 update, SEOs and recipe bloggers noticed AI spam sites surging to the top of search results. One example as of yesterday ranked for over 217K queries, 14.9K of which rank in the top 10 – and that number has increased a day later. This is what’s going on and how the spammers continue to beat Google.
Surge In March 2024
The site that’s ranking is a subdomain. The main domain has been around since the summer of 2020. The spammy subdomain was first spotted by the Internet Archive on November 30 2022, coincidentally the launch date of ChatGPT. The subdomain was in a half-finished and essentially dormant until March 2024 when it rapidly expanded and immediately began to rank for thousands of search queries.
Wednesday March 20th the site was ranking 14.9k search queries in the top 10. Thursday March 21st the site had 15.6K in the top 10. Even though Google just concluded their spam update, this particular site (and others like it) continue to rank for thousands of search queries and Google appears powerless to stop them.
Food Writer Reacts To AI Spam
A food writer and recipe book author, Robin Donovan (Instagram), called my attention to the AI site, telling me that others in a private Facebook group were livid about AI sites surging for recipe search queries.
It’s super obvious that the content is AI generated, even the images accompanying the articles are 100% AI. So it’s especially hurtful to those with experience, expertise and authoritativeness to see obviously AI content outrank them.
Robin was understandably upset:
“How on earth is this the best content? And meanwhile, bloggers who are professionally trained chefs, recipe developers, cookbook authors, and others with decades of training and experience are watching their sites be decimated with these updates. Sites that they’ve spent years building with well-researched, well-written (human-written!) articles, recipes that have been professionally developed and carefully tested, photographs they have spent hours prepping for and shooting.
They’ve done all the things Google has told them to do for years—write your own content, take your own photos, develop unique, high-quality recipes, be an expert in your subject area and have credentials to show it, don’t try to game the system, be genuine, create HELPFUL content. For what?”
Details About The Spam Sites Look Like
1. Hosted On Squarespace
The spam site is on a subdomain and both the subdomain and the main site are hosted on Squarespace. Why Squarespace? Just a guess but maybe that infrastructure tends to generally appear legit to Google (or it might not play a role).